Casey barred from Quality Concrete

Marc Munroe Dion

Friday

Aug 31, 2007 at 12:01 AMAug 31, 2007 at 7:44 PM

City Councilor Pat Casey said Thursday she has been told she is no longer welcome on the Tripp Street property owned by Quality Concrete Corp., property where 9-year-old Codey Duclos, a child of that South End neighborhood, died Aug. 17 after falling into a concrete sand hopper at the plant the day before.

City Councilor Pat Casey said Thursday she has been told she is no longer welcome on the Tripp Street property owned by Quality Concrete Corp., property where 9-year-old Codey Duclos, a child of that South End neighborhood, died Aug. 17 after falling into a concrete sand hopper at the plant the day before.
“I’ve been asked not to go on the property anymore,” Casey said.
Codey Duclos wasn’t the first child to die at Quality Concrete, a place many neighborhood children find nearly irresistible. On Oct. 31, 1997, 12-year-old Eric Martins went into a gravel pit to save his friend, Kyle M. DeMello, 11, who had fallen into the pit and was being sucked into the machinery. DeMello lived but Martins died two days later.
“I’ve been going there every day,” Casey said.
On Wednesday, Casey said she was working well with plant management and that they had agreed to accept several of her suggestions as to safety at the plant. Later that day, a manager at Quality told Casey to stay off the property.
“He said I was making a charade of it,” Casey said, adding that “charade” was the exact word used by the manager.
It has been Casey’s contention that the danger at Quality Concrete’s 245 Tripp St. plant comes not so much from the ease with which children can get onto the property as from what she says is insufficient security around the pits or hoppers where gravel and sand is fed onto a conveyor belt for mixing. Both fatalities of the last decade occurred when a child was sucked into those pits.
On Wednesday, Casey said she’d persuaded Quality to install monitoring cameras at the hoppers as well as warning lights and sirens that would sound when the machinery was in use.
“They’ve got the poles, the lights, the cameras, but they’re not plugged in,” she said.
Now Casey said if she can’t get on the property, it may be hard to tell if the company does indeed install the equipment.
“I didn’t bother anyone when I was there,” she said. “I’ve been very happy to see the progress.”
Casey insisted that she has not been attempting to make Quality Concrete look bad.
“That wasn’t my intention,” Casey said. “My intention was to see that we don’t have another child die.
“The neighbors call me every day to ask what’s going on,” Casey said. “I hate to let the neighbors know I can’t go on the property, but I have to be honest.”
Casey was adamant that she doesn’t plan to stop trying.
“I’ll see what I can from outside the property,” she said. “There are other avenues to find out.”
Casey was also adamant about the reason why she is so involved.
“My focus is to make sure we don’t have another child killed,” Casey said.
Quality Concrete Corp. refused to provide a comment Thursday.